They kept it a secret in 1991 too. Then it was because the US govt. had secretly given Saddam Hussein’s regime some of our binary munitions, via Jordan, in the 1980’s to test on the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war.
The US govt. was afraid it would be blamed if SH’s regime used some of those left-overs on American forces during Desert Storm, so it hushed up the sporadic use of chemical weapons by Iraqi forces during Desert Storm, plus accidental releases during and after that war. The latter were due as much to allied bombing of Iraqi munitions dumps during the war as to mistakes by Iraqi forces plus, after the cease-fire, by American forces in destroying captured Iraqi munitions. The latter also happened after the 2003 conquest of Iraq.
The Ba’ath in Iraq had a bunch of chemical agent shells which were manufactured to US standards, using US designs, but were manufactured in Europe and sold to Iraq.
Potentially embarrassing nonetheless, given the skewed nature of press coverage.
Also true that Karl Rove made the call that it was politically not worth the effort of “relitigating” the issue of WMDs in Iraq, after the left had already ingrained their version into the popular view of the issue.
untrue